I’m very excited to have the latest issue of Lackington’s Magazine on my reader to explore this issue’s bestial themes. The story it was my privilege to illustrate is by Elaine Cuyegkeng, who has created something truly unique and brilliant that will persist in the mind of the reader for a long time.

Issue 12 is the bestiary we always knew we wanted. This “Animals” collection features one, perhaps two (if you squint) traditional animal tales. The other five stories are hardly the stuff of nurseries, full of shadowy creatures that creep and skitter, slink and lunge.

First off, Kaleidotrope, Autumn 2015 is here!

Hot Damn! There’s so much to dig into in this issue, and it’s most gratifying to see my art on the cover.

The Encounter – Kaleidotrope Cover Art – P. Emerson Williams

Fred Coppersmith, the venerable editor of Kaleidotrope, has assembled a great and fascinating journey for us in the pages of the latest edition, which can be read at www.kaleidotrope.net. The stories can also be downloaded in epub and mobi format to be loaded onto your favourite reader or tablet, which is how I curled up to delve into these stories and poems.FICTION

Be sure to check out Thomas’ latest short story – a scifi myth entitled Norns which has just been published in this month’s Esoterica Zine (Vol. 2: Plant).

“The silver ship plummets from the star-strewn stratosphere, like a phosphorescent, quicksilver meteor. At first it is but a rapidly falling point of pure white light, but its brilliant circle swells as it descends, until the hull’s metallic disk obscures a substantial swathe of sky, directly above you. It halts with impossible suddenness, some one hundred feet in the air, and hangs absolutely motionless, in perfect silence.”

“Three knowing Norns,
From the Well beneath the Tree:
Fate, Becoming and Necessity are their names.
They make laws, they choose lives,
They set our fates.”
– The Poetic Edda

Like this:

Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you: things have gone quite Lovecraftian around here. And indeed it was thrilling and spine-chilling to be impelled to create these visual pieces for two entities of eldritch strangeness I have long enjoyed and admired from afar.

First off, hie thee hence to Lovecraft eZine Issue #35. Therein you’ll find Eden, a cosmic tale told brilliantly by Tom Lynch for which I created the illustration below. As you already should be doing devour this issue from end to end, support Lovecraft eZine until it bleeds, and then support some more.

Next is a two-parter that warmed my heart and chilled my soul to take on. I summoned the creatures of strange tales, entities of legend and lore, aye none other than the beings inhabiting the vast towers of the Drabblecast and was invited in to illustrate two successive episodes celebrating Lovecraft Month with a portentous reading of The Whisperer In Darkness writ by the hermit of Providence himself! With fevered intensity did mine crabbed hands scrabble across the paper these visual evocations of fungoid horror! Let Norm Sherman awaken cosmic horror in you as he gives voice to this delightfully harrowing tale.

And here too do I say support the Drabblecast with all thine lucre, all thine love and all thine life-force until nothing is left of thy being but a twitching husk baying at the gibbous moon!